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Tag Archives: cherry heering

We’ve been trying to explore new and interesting fortified wines, so the other day I picked up a bottle of Byrrh. I was expecting it to be sweet vermouth, but it is much more reserved in its herbal qualities, and its primary flavor is much closer to grape juice, or maybe to port. It has that same deep, sweet, raisin quality that one finds in a ruby port, but perhaps it is not quite as complex.

Anyway, I got it into my head to make a long drink, and it tasted like wine soda; dry, crisp, and refreshing. I like the combination of cherry and grape, so I used Byrrh as the base, modified it with Cherry Heering, and cut the sugar with a quarter ounce of lemon. The result was very approachable, I think.

You know what you don’t see often enough? Scotch cocktails. I think they are unpopular because they are generally made with blended scotch whiskey, and blended Scotch whiskey is not compelling. Personally I am not a huge fan of blended Scotches. Even the finer ones taste muddy and indistinct compared to the clarion symphony that is the experience of a quality single malt. I have tasted some small batch vatted malts that were very good, and I am aware that there is an art to blending them, but certainly the common ones are boring and awful.

On the other hand, single malt Scotches are expensive, and mixing them with other ingredients (besides other single malts?) is a kind of sacrilege. The distiller spent ever so much time and care to imbue that scotch with all of its most sublime and subtle qualities. Many recipes do call for small measures of Islay Scotches, I think because they are outside of the mainstream palate, and because their flavors are very bold. Indeed, it is a bold Scotch that can convey its character when it shares space in a glass with other ingredients.

As the season turns colder, I’ve been feeling a longing for the warming embrace of a mixed drink with single malt, and lucky for me, blood oranges are coming into season. Therefore, it is time to make one of the most famous scotch-based drinks, the Blood and Sand. I wanted to modify this drink to highlight the virtues of one of my favorite single malts, the Balvenie Doublewood, so I re-jiggered it to be more Scotch-centric.

I wanted to set it free, so I doubled the proportion of the Scotch, and dropped the liqueur and vermouth substantially. Cherry Heering is an elephant, and it will crush the other flavors in a drink with reckless oblivion. I replaced it with Drambuie, which is made with Scotch whiskey already, which means that it interferes less with the base spirit. I had originally considered cutting the vermouth entirely, but after tasting it pre-vermouth, I knew it needed that hint of bitterness and depth, so I kept it, but I dialed the vermouth down to a quarter ounce, and added orange bitters.

The end result is oaky, with a backend of bitter citrus. I have made this drink in the past using regular orange juice, and it sucks. Blood orange is the only true orange juice for this drink.

When I first acquired a bottle of Cherry Heering, I was excited by the prospect of a liqueur reminiscent of one of my favorite beers, Unibroue’s Quelque Chose. Alas, it sits on my bar, gathering dust, mostly full. Every drink that calls for it falls squarely in the cluster of gin, lemon, cherry, with minor variations, and a man can only drink so much cherry sour. Even so, the Elephants Sometimes Forget was a pleasing instance of this.

According to Webtender: Cherry Heering is a Danish cherry liqueur invented in the late 1700s or the early 1800s by Peter Heering. It is dark red and has a flavor of black-cherries that is not overly sweet.

In my experience it can taste medicinal in the wrong hands, but this drink was surprisingly dry and had no elements of cough syrup at all. Beefeater isn’t the most complex gin going around, but the juniper is still assertive, and it worked very well with the other ingredients. Still, with 3/4 oz of liqueur, everything else takes a back-seat to spiced cherries.